


How to Dream Sweet

by jackfish



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, Past Child Abuse, Past Sexual Abuse, Torture, Vigilantism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-05
Updated: 2014-10-05
Packaged: 2018-02-20 01:19:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2409818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jackfish/pseuds/jackfish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yondu has his own way of dealing with Kraglin's nightmares—and the cause of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How to Dream Sweet

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the [Guardians of the Galaxy Kink Meme](http://guardian-kink.livejournal.com/1806.html?thread=1055502#t1055502) on [Livejournal](http://guardian-kink.livejournal.com).

Sometimes Yondu deeply regrets ever letting Kraglin take up the habit of staying over. The old boy might be a good lay, but he's a lousy sleeper. He sprawls, claiming more than his fair share of the bed despite being hardly any wider than a toothpick. He takes forever to drop off, and then he'll toss and turn for half the cycle, sometimes getting up and getting dressed after just a couple of hours and fucking off to do who knows what.

All right, maybe Yondu's checked up on him once or twice. Often enough to know that Kraglin usually just goes for a run, does some lifting, and tries to catch the watch crew slacking off.

Still, all that restlessness is a disturbance to his own beauty rest. One that's just barely mitigated by the fact that Kraglin generally wakes him up with a blowjob at least once a week.

Then there's the bad dreams.

This time, Yondu's hauled up from the depths of sleep by the sound of ragged breathing. Kraglin's lying next to him, flung out on his back with one arm over his eyes and the other curled above his head. His legs are twitching like a hound's does when it dreams of chasing burrowers—or maybe like a burrower's does when it dreams of getting chased. 

Yondu has slept straight through a firefight when he's put his mind to it, but this sort of thing unsettles him worse than a listing ship. Awake, Kraglin's no coward. Yondu trusts him to watch his back, a second set of eyes and muscle always behind him. In the field, the sound of Kraglin breathing hard means trouble, and that's a hard-coded alarm system that Yondu can't switch off in private.

"Quit that," he says, his voice scratchy.

Kraglin groans and twitches again. His head turns restlessly, and Yondu can smell the acrid sweat and tension rolling off him. He reaches over and smacks Kraglin lightly on the chest, which sometimes does the trick. 

It doesn't this time.

"...lock the door," Kraglin mutters. His fist bangs against the wall above the head of the bed. He makes an awful sound in his throat.

"Asshole," Yondu sighs when he's forced to sit up. He grabs Kraglin's wrists so that he doesn't get socked in the face in about two seconds and then jostles him hard. "Wake up. Come on, Krag. Up!" 

Kraglin jolts like he's been shot. "Don't!"

His knee comes up as he tries to swing his fists. His eyes fly open, showing their whites all around, but Yondu knows from experience that he's not really awake, not when he's gasping for air and shaking like that, trying to say "don't" over and over with his jaw clenched shut. 

Yondu lets go of him and smacks him on the chest again. "You're snoring. What'd I tell you about snoring in my bed?"

Kraglin stops trying to hit him. He's still panting, but his eyes slowly close and his knee eases down. He groans again, quieter this time.

"What'd I tell you?" Yondu prompts.

"Sleep on m'side or get'hell out," Kraglin slurs.

"That's right," Yondu says.

Kraglin tangles in the blankets when he tries to turn over, and Yondu impatiently catches him before he can roll off the bed.

"Wrong side, genius." 

Kraglin tries again, clumsily kicking him as he rolls back the other way. Yondu shifts back down and pulls him into his arms. He can feel the sweat dripping down the side of Kraglin's face as it presses against his shoulder. Kraglin's breathing slows down one gulp and shuddery exhalation at a time, but he keeps on shaking.

"There you go," Yondu murmurs, holding on to him good and tight. "Hush up, now."

It's always the same. Doors that won't lock, windows that won't shut. Yondu's heard enough in bits and pieces over the years to get the idea. There's a room somewhere, and something real bad is trying to get in, and there's no keeping it out. No one would ever accuse Kraglin of being too original a thinker, but that's not what Yondu keeps him around for. It's up to the captain to have the big ideas. The first mate's there to turn ideas into done deals, and to ask the stolid questions that sometimes aren't as stupid as they sound. 

Yondu could probably drift off again, even with the noise of Kraglin's teeth chattering, but he's come to view getting Kraglin settled as an investment in his own uninterrupted sleep for the rest of the cycle. He starts rubbing Kraglin's back, wiping some of the sweat off with the blanket. His hand moves briskly from between Kraglin's shoulder blades to the dip in the small of his back, over the faintly raised lines of his tattoos. There's a thicker scar that he keeps clear of, a big knot hooked around the edge of Kraglin's hip. It's an old one, stretched out over the years and hardened up. Something wider than a switch but sharper than a belt once caught him there and tore a strip of skin right off. 

Kraglin lets out a sigh and eases up. There's a longer count between each fit of shivering until, finally, it quits altogether and Yondu's left with a cold, clammy armful. He keeps on stroking Kraglin's back, slower now but just as steady. His palm slides back and forth at about the speed that someone with enough brains to sleep soundly would breathe at. 

In...out. 

In...out.

If you ask him, that's half of all you need to sleep well. You just breathe in and out, deep and measured, until your body gets the hint to lie still and close your eyes for you. Then you think some soothing thoughts to give your brain something nice to chew on. 

Like now, for instance. As he closes his eyes, feeling Kraglin get heavier against him, he's thinking of an itty bitty house at the edge of a desert town on one of the Xandarian mining colonies. A cold night, the sky full of bright stars and darting light-bugs.

It was a couple of years back that Yondu took himself a little holiday to Salt Run, but he still thinks of it fondly. That crooked back step where he sat a while, looking up at the big golden moon. The sound of critters scampering out on the hard-packed sand. It seemed like a peaceful spot, the sort of place where he sometimes thinks about retiring on those rare and contrary days when the constant humming of a ship's engines made him get romantic about backwoods and boondocks. The house was a haul-in, made of tin and set on sandstone blocks, and it trembled when a vehicle finally approached. 

Yondu waited. The house was ten miles out from town and at least half that from its nearest neighbour, so he wasn't surprised when the sand-rig eventually pulled up out front. He waited while the driver got out. He waited until he heard the fumbling at the front door, the sound of the lock disengaging. Then he got up, went around the side of the house, and stuck a blaster to the back of Huxton Obfonteri's head.

Kraglin's daddy put up a fight, but that was all right. There was no one around to hear the fuss as Yondu got him dragged inside and cuffed to the radiator. Huxton quieted down a little then, watching Yondu from the floor with a familiar wariness. He was a tall man, bone-skinny, with bloodshot grey eyes and half his teeth rotted out of his head. 

"Shit. If Meeka sent you, you can tell him I ain't got his money."

Yondu ignored him for the time being, taking his time looking around the main room of the house. It was filthy, even by his own lax standards. The floor was barely visible under several layers of grime, littered with trash and rotting food scraps in carry-out cartons. A hundred-legged insect darted out from under the stained, sagging couch, making for a hole in the far wall. The place stank of backed-up sewage and the half-sweet, corrosive smell of the kind of drugs you cooked up in a bathroom sink.

He walked over to the outdated comp unit and idly pulled up a screen.

"Did you hear me, mister?" The cuffs rattled. "I said I ain't got any money in my account."

"I heard you," Yondu said. 

True enough, Huxton's credit bank proved empty save for some state rations. Yondu really only checked it out of habit before browsing the directory. He turned up a batch of old files and scrolled through a few recordings and still images before pausing over one in particular. His lips twitched as he pulled the image up to fill the screen.

"Now look at that," he said with a chuckle. "Awkward little bugger, wasn't he?"

Huxton stared at the picture like he had never seen it before. It showed a scrawny, blue-eyed kid standing out in the yard in front of the house, proudly holding up a big dead snake. He was barefoot, dressed in a dirty undershirt and a pair of pants that were too short by at least two inches. A pair of sun goggles hung around his neck. His hair was overgrown, and there were fading yellow bruises on both his arms.

"Who are you?" Huxton finally asked.

Yondu grinned. Or rather, he showed his teeth.

"I'm the one putting it to your boy these days."

Huxton turned real white real fast. He twisted to look back at the front door.

"He ain't here," Yondu said. "I thought we could keep this little visit between the two of us."

"Look," Huxton said, licking his lips nervously. "I don't know what—"

"You mind if I take me a copy of this?" Yondu asked, already swiping the drive.

Huxton faltered and shook his head uncertainly. "If he said—"

"There any baby pictures on here?"

"I...I don't know."

Yondu shrugged. He returned to stand in front of Kraglin's daddy and then crouched down to look him in the eye. He slipped his arrow from its quiver and turned it over thoughtfully in his hands.

"Now," he said, "you were gonna tell me how you never laid a finger on him."

It took a while to get the truth out of him, but Yondu wasn't in any kind of hurry. 

The conversation started out the way he expected it to: Kraglin was a damned liar, Yondu had himself the wrong idea, had himself the wrong house, could get the hell out and go fuck himself. That nonsense only lasted until he knocked out two of Huxton's remaining teeth and made him swallow them. 

"Try again," he said.

The man didn't have any of his son's grit. He cowered right down when he was hit, snivelling and choking, trying to hide his face. Maybe, he muttered, maybe he had gotten too rough with the boy a time or two. Maybe there had been some sort of misunderstanding.

Yondu considered that. "A misunderstanding. Those do like to happen."

It was a misunderstanding that had led to Raxa nearly getting his head stove in trying to play grab-ass with the new recruit in the showers, Kraglin's first week on the ship. 

A misunderstanding had twice gotten Yondu hit in the face in his own bed, not to mention kneed in the pouch. The resulting black eye and split lip had prompted another misunderstanding, because Horuz had a soft spot for Kraglin and had gotten very insistent about finding out just what Yondu had done to deserve getting fought off. 

Huxton was nodding, blood running down his chin and desperation in his eyes. A misunderstanding. He had been doing a lot of spark back then, he said. He didn't even remember most of the year before Kraglin ran away. Didn't remember him leaving—boy was just gone one day. Ran off with his money and his stash and never came back. Nothing happened, but if it did, it wasn't his fault. It was all the drugs' doing.

"How old was he?" Yondu asked.

Huxton shook his head. His gaze flickered to the picture still pulled up on the comp screen. Didn't remember, he said.

But funny how his memory seemed to clear up once Yondu started cutting on him. 

There was a lot of blood. A lot of wailing. A lot of promising money and dope he didn't have if Yondu stopped. Maybe it happened. Just the one time. It was an accident. He never meant it, but it happened, and it didn't happen again for a long time after that, he swore it didn't. The boy's mama had taken off. He wasn't thinking right. It just happened.

"Yeah," Yondu sighed, pinning down Huxton's legs so that he couldn't thrash too much when he figured out what was coming next. "Things just happen sometimes."

You couldn't make a man regret doing anything, but you could make him regret getting caught. Kraglin's daddy was sorry by the end of it. He saw to that.

Afterwards, Yondu washed up in the narrow bathroom. The water was foul and rusty, but it got the worst of the mess off. He wandered through the rest of the house, drying his hands on the inside of his coat. There was nothing much of interest: a bedroom with two mouldering mattresses stacked one on top of the other, and a smaller room hardly bigger than a closet, with the rickety legs of an old cot peeking out from under a heap of worthless junk.

The place wasn't worth wasting a wipe-down field on, or even the effort of burning it down. He doubted the law out here was intrepid or well-funded enough to do a bio-sweep. And anyhow, he decided he wouldn't be too sorry to have this one turn up on his warrant list.

He propped open the back door so that the critters could come in later and have their fill. That was one of the things he liked about hardscrabble country like this: nothing ever went to waste. He lingered for a while to consider the picture Huxton Obfonteri made, his grey eyes blank and already filming over, his pants open and bloodstained and the sorry scrap of his dick lying on the floor two feet away. Then he smiled in satisfaction, patted the corpse on the cheek, and saw himself out.

It's a nice little memory, nice enough to put a hint of that same smile on his face as he starts to drift off again. His hand is still moving slowly up and down Kraglin's back, softly but insistently, as if he might rub some sense into the idiot while he's unconscious and suggestible. 

Breathe in. Breathe out. Everything's fine, just fine. Nothing to worry about, not any more.

Kraglin actually is snoring now, vexatious asshole that he is. His nose is jammed against the side of Yondu's neck. His mouth is hot and damp, brushing against Yondu's bare skin along with the sharp prickle of his scruff. He's got one arm and leg flung out, not so much cuddled up any more as he is presumptuously using Yondu for a mattress. He weighs more than you'd think for such a lanky bastard, and that's multiplied to approximately a ton when he's wrung-out and limp.

But Kraglin's warm and steady, and altogether it takes an awful lot to keep a man like Yondu awake at night.

He lets his hand fall still at the nape of Kraglin's neck, blocks out the grinding snores in his ear, and sleeps deep and peaceful with Kraglin in his arms until the next watch bell sounds.


End file.
